News Archive

Italy is live with T2S

Italy is now fully live with real-time settlement on the European Central Bank’s Target2-Securities platform as of Monday, August 31. TAS Group’s Aquarius implementation team was deeply involved throughout the 38 hours migration process to assist both direct and indirect participants connected to Monte Titoli, Italy’s Central Custodian and largest Central Depository having joint T2S in the first wave.

“At TAS, we have been working on the T2S migration with 21 customers, market infrastructures and participants providing our innovative platform Aquarius to over half of them: DCPs and ICPs. Going live in the first wave we were faced with many complexities but, from the beginning, we haven’t experienced any critical or blocking issue.” reported Mario Mendia, Director of Capital Markets & Treasury Business Unit

Since early 2009, TAS Group has been working on the T2S project and more recently on the development of Aquarius, the new platform for the integrated management of Cash, Securities and Collateral. More than 70 TAS professionals were dedicated to the success of this migration project, collaborating with many customer groups across Italy who chose Aquarius for its features extending beyond just T2S capabilities.

“This project was both demanding and challenging: a new platform for the European settlement in a continuously evolving market required us to respond in a visionary way,” said Roberto Bruschi, Head of Capital Markets & Treasury Business Development at TAS Group.

Bruschi further commented, “With Aquarius, we wanted to implement a technologically advanced, modular platform able to evolve over the next years in a dynamic and flexible way. In order to respond to the future needs of European financial operators, Aquarius is the realization of a liquidity management system that considers all types of banking liquid assets and satisfies increasing volumes of settlement requests.”

Mendia added: “We are currently working on the next steps of this strategical project, which includes two main directions: the stabilization and the delivery of the new modules within the domestic context, plus the T2S delivery for the next waves in Europe.”

Analytics are already coming in for the Italian market’s over 100 billion euros in transactions per day running on the new platform. Stay tuned for reporting in the coming weeks!

Is your country migrating next? Contact us to find out how Aquarius can facilitate a smooth migration for your institution. Contact a TAS Group Target2-Securities expert: CMT@tasgroup.eu